Bahrain’s oldest migrant workers’ rights organisation sees an opportunity in strengthening safety net within the kingdom to ensure respect and care for every person who comes to the island.
In its recently published newsletter, the Migrant Workers Protection Society (MWPS) highlighted this alongside several cases that it helped resolve last year.
“From July to September, the MWPS assisted several individuals facing profound difficulties – these included workers with expired visas, unrecovered passports and the inability to return home due to travel bans or a lack of resources,” MWPS chairperson Mona Almoayyed told the GDN.
“Each case is a human story – of someone seeking medical care, hoping to reunite with family, or simply wishing to return home with dignity after their work here concluded.
“Our role was to provide the necessary legal and logistical support to make that possible.”
One of the cases that the MWPS helped address between July and September last year was that of an unemployed Sri Lankan man with dementia who discovered a travel ban imposed on him when attempting to fly back home for urgent medical treatment.
The ban had been imposed by his former landlord due to unpaid room rent.
MWPS intervened to recover his passport and lift the travel ban, also arranging a one-way flight ticket to facilitate his repatriation.
Another case involving a Sri Lankan national was that of a housemaid who was forced to work for more than a year under difficult conditions, including 16-hour workdays and workplace injuries.
In addition to serving her employing family, she was made to work for three additional families, and her sponsor’s restaurant. She was paid a monthly salary of BD150, and was allegedly threatened by her sponsor’s wife.
During her work, she fell twice from stairs, and when she requested her sponsor’s permission to return to Sri Lanka, the sponsor refused, withheld her passport, and did not pay half of her final month’s salary, according to the newsletter.
She eventually approached the Labour Market Regulatory Authority (LMRA) to recover her passport.
In the meantime, the sponsor filed a runaway case against her and cancelled her visa, making her homeless and unemployed.
After an intervention from the LMRA, Sri Lankan Embassy, the police and MWPS, the sponsor handed over the passport.
Another domestic worker who came to Bahrain from India to work for a local family, endured a heavy workload with minimal rest, developing health issues, as a result of which her employment was terminated.
After her dismissal, she found part-time work but was unable to support herself and her family back home. Without a valid visa or stable employment, she could not afford immigration penalties or a flight ticket home. MWPS helped her pay the fine and arranged a one-way flight ticket.
The MWPS also assisted three Cameroonian nationals, who were forced to seek alternative methods of arbitration in the absence of a dedicated embassy in the kingdom. The nearest Cameroon embassy is in Riyadh.
Two of these individuals arrived in Bahrain on a visit visa, hoping to find employment and convert them into work visas. MWPS facilitated their return.
Another detained Cameroonian was on an expired flexi visa and had no job. Due to the high cost and urgency of repatriation, MWPS and Sri Sathya Sai Global Council each agreed to cover half of the ticket cost.
Meanwhile, a Nigerian national who had to undergo brain surgery at Salmaniya Medical Complex was unable to travel back to her home country immediately, requiring at least two months of rest.
Due to her condition, arrangements were made for her to stay in a shared flat with a volunteer from her community who assisted with her care.
MWPS verified the situation and provided essential support by covering her share of the rent for the accommodation and supplying dry ration kits to ensure she had access to basic food items during her recovery.
naman@gdnmedia.bh
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